Florida, Billy Napier produced 'inexcusable' play in loss to Utah

It may have come in an opener but, overall, Florida caused some major concerns in their 24-11 loss to Utah. To Nick de la Torre of GatorsOnline, they’re even more significant considering where they stemmed from and where the program finds itself in the timeline of Billy Napier’s tenure.

De la Torre joined ‘Andy Staples On3’ on Sunday to dive deeper into the Gator’s loss to the Utes. In the end, one of his issues comes from the fact that their more notable blunders come directly from coaching, or at least a person that the head coach hired.

“Listen, I forget the president but, ‘The buck stops here’. Everything will fall on Billy Napier’s desk,” said de la Torre.

“I’m also a big proponent of you hire smart people and then let them do their job,” de la Torre continued. “I don’t know that it’s Billy Napier’s fault, per se, that you have two guys wearing the same jersey number on a punt. But Billy Napier is the guy that hired the analyst that’s getting the guys ready to go on the field. So everything will fall on his shoulders.”

Florida found issues inside Rice-Eccles Stadium in all three phases of the game. On offense, Graham Mertz had to attempt 44 throws with one going for an interception. That’s because the run game never got going as they finished at less than a yard per attempt. Then, defensively, they faltered right from the start as, in Cam Rising’s place, Bryson Barnes completed a 70-yard touchdown pass on his first snap of the season.

Finally, the real killer was the handful of random penalties that cost Florida across the board. They finished with nine on the night with some being far more confusing than others.

Considering what he had heard out of Gainesville this offseason, de la Torre was perplexed by the errors all around. That’s why, against McNeese next weekend, he’s hoping to see significant progress and an outing that reflects a program that’s in year two under their head coach rather than year one.

“What do you do to fix it this week? Because the stuff that happened on Thursday night is inexcusable, especially going into your 14th game,” de la Torre said.

“This is stuff that, all offseason? We heard, ‘The operation is better’, ‘It’s year two for the players but the coaches as well,'” said de la Torre. “It looked like game two, not year two, on Thursday.”

Finebaum ‘baffled’ by Florida, Billy Napier in Week 1

A few teams across the country disappointed their fanbases with their overall play in week one. However, no team left Paul Finebaum more confused in the official opening weekend of the college football season than the Florida Gators.

Finebaum deemed the Gators as his most disappointing team from the past few days of games during ‘The Matt Barrie Show’ on Sunday. He felt it was a very lackluster performance across the board, especially considering how undermanned that the Utes were in their 13-point victory.

“To me? I came away from Florida just baffled,” said Finebaum. “I wasn’t expecting them to be a great team but I just expected them to look well-coached, organized. And everything they did was to hand Utah a game. And Utah was about as short-handed as they could be without a star quarterback, a star tight end, defensive players.”

To Finebaum, this all falls on the shoulders of Billy Napier as the head coach in Gainesville. In general, he is left disappointed by the 14 games of Napier’s time with Florida. At this point, he’d now rather hear him own up some of it rather than try to explain some of the problems away.

“Billy Napier continues to underwhelm as a head coach at Florida,” Finebaum said. “That is now, what, 14 games into his tenure? It looked like his first game. He looked clueless at times.”

“There’s just nothing he says that really is compelling. He said, ‘Yeah, I saw a lot of good things‘. No! You didn’t see a lot of good things,” continued Finebaum. “I don’t mind a coach who goes up there and just takes responsibility. That says I blew it, it won’t happen again, gives the Tim Tebow promise speech. Just don’t go in there and sound like a high school gym teacher.”

There’s a lot to clean up in The Swamp and they’ll have their chance to right the ship to a degree next weekend against McNeese.